Just Yoko and Me

Once, on a weekday while playing hooky at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, I encountered a famous figure in one of the galleries. The dark, oversized sunglasses and derby hat were unmistakable, as was her face. As she pondered work after work in a series of galleries that held only the two of us, I pondered her.

This encounter took place in the ’90s. I am fairly certain I was not visiting a special exhibition but rather MoMA’s permanent collection. The evident thoughtfulness and scrutiny Yoko brought to each work only underscored my characteristic dilettantism. I was now there to gawk; she was there to absorb art.

Like most people, I only knew Yoko Ono as the notorious spouse who broke up The Beatles and as a famous New Yorker. She was the ultimate rock-and-roll villain, and here I was, chillin’ with the villain.

A part of me wanted to approach and ask, “How could you?” even though it is well documented that her role as the breakup agent was a myth.

Another part of me wanted to ask her what it was like to be so famous and to live in The Dakota.

What a shame that those scant facts were all I knew about this great woman.

Yes, great woman.

Today, I know that Yoko Ono was a pioneering conceptual artist. As a multimedia artist, musician, and activist who shaped avant-garde art from the 1950s onward, she has always been overshadowed by Lennon.

I admit I burst out laughing when taking in her “Voice Piece for Soprano & Wish Tree," in which she screamed and emitted a bizarre series of grunts and “waha hooha”s at MoMA in July 2010. Howard Stern had a field day with that piece of performance art.

As I have learned over time, conceptual art is often about the debate and conversation it provokes rather than the work itself. Marcel Duchamp’s pioneering conceptual work, “Fountain,” which I wrote about in this space, was met with disdain and continues to provoke mockery.

In the spring of 2026, The New York Times Style Magazine published an article asking, “Is Yoko Ono still our most radical artist?” The essay stated, “As attacks on women’s rights escalate, [her] decades-old works of feminist art feel more relevant than ever.”

Today, at 92, she lives a reclusive life on a farm in upstate New York.

I wish I had known about Ono’s importance to the art world when it was just her and me at MoMA all those years ago. I’d have wanted to ask her about her art, not The Beatles.

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